I Support the Legalization of Marijuana

@helenS yes, in this province it's going to be sold in liquor stores and by mail order

I have mixed feelings about this. The science of addiction is fuzzy on it as is the long term effects. On the other hand, data on regular cigarettes and alcohol is pretty clear on showing serious effects. Man has always found a way to get high, we need a way to keep it somewhat safe.

@samueltyler2 Red wine may be a good compromise!
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@helenS I don't drink

@samueltyler2 think about how many lives prohibition has needlessly ruined over the last century, and the cost in enforcement and trials and prisons, the gangs and cartels, and the selection pressure for stronger and stronger drugs. Crack, stronger weed, hydromorphone, fentanyl, now carfentanil, and all kinds of new synthetic drugs with completely unknown effects designed specifically to get around drug laws.

I can certainly say that every one of my psych meds has a much longer list of dangerous side effects than weed. That doesn't mean weed is harmless, but it does mean that outlawing it is immoral.

@SW-User I am not arguing with that. I am a little concerned if cannabinoids become totally unregulated, the way tobacco was for too many years. Many substances used with discretion can be useful and not dangerous, but how do you control that? The proliferation of synthetic cannabinoids, far more dangerous, is frightening and perhaps the availability of cannabis products legally controlled would be useful in prevention of the use of the illegal. The problem there is that legal cannabinoids tend to cost more.

As to the "new" drugs of abuse, the internet has proven to be too easy a route to obtain them. If everyone would know about the drugs they are purchasing and using, perhaps it wouldn't be so bad, except that it is still caveat emptor, the buyer beware. The way medications and mind altering drugs are controlled in the US is archaic and has only produced a generation of chemists constantly looking for another way to tweak a molecule to make it work but not be regulated. In my opinion that needs to be changed. Given all of that, you are correct prohibition was an experiment that proved the government cannot just ban a substance used regularly by at least 10% of the population.


I tend to be a little libertarian about medication. I do believe that you have the right to put something into your body, as long as it doesn't hurt someone else, there is the rub though. How do you define that? What if you use and get into an accident or hurt your family?


I don't have the answers, but after nearly 50 years of treating various types of overdoses and addictions, I have a lot of the questions.

@samueltyler2 Well, the current plan here is to regulate it more or less the same way they do with alcohol. Canada will be an interesting incubator because deciding where and how to sell it, as well as minimum age to buy it, are provincial responsibilities and so it will vary across the country. In this province, all alcohol is sold by the government in liquor stores, and cannabis will be sold in the same stores in the same way, and the minimum age is the same as for alcohol (19). I've read in the papers that the government is aware that they will be competing with a well-established illicit market (in fact, eliminating this market is part of the purpose), and so will not be adopting punitive pricing. We'll see.

These new drugs are frightening and I can only see this getting worse in the future. At least existing drugs have been studied and tested. Banning new drugs would seem to make more sense than a blanket ban on the old ones.

I think you bear the responsibility for what you do when you take a drug for recreational purposes, or in fact when you drive when you're full of benzos which, while prescribed to you, make you unable to operate a vehicle safely.

You're the one with the experience, so ultimately I defer to you, but I was specifically talking about cannabis and not any other drug. I think each drug needs to be treated separately because they all do different things. I certainly don't think they should be selling fentanyl patches in corner stores!

I will watch Canada very carefully. Unfortunately, the US often watches others make mistakes, and then simply repeats them. Let us hope that doesn't happen this time.

Fentanyl is a very different situation. The first serious outbreak of heroin laced with fentanyl was in the 1990s, called China White. Somehow that abated and then started again in 2006 and was traced to illicit manufactured fentanyl. The current outbreak seems to be related to importation of the substance in its raw chemical form. Again, Canada has led the way in dealing with heroin addiction in Vancouver where there are safe, legal places to go to have an addict take his/her fix in a supportive environment which is prepared to deal with an overdose and provides clean equipment. There are some places in the US starting to adopt that model.

@samueltyler2 Have you ever looked at how our prohibition have effected street drugs. They passed a law against smokeable opium, that is when they came up with injectable heroin, it was legal where smokeable opium was not. So they banned heroin. But it goes on and on so many of the bad substances that are killing people came to pass because we banned something else, bath salts that people take, because you cant get pot. They crack down on prescription opiates like hydrocodone and people turn to heroin. To schedule marijuana as a drug with no legitimate value what so ever is simply untrue. The war on drugs has causes worse effects than the drugs themselves ever would. People need to be responsible for their actions and choices and not have the government try to protect them from themselves it just does not work.